


When You Have to Go There

by sahiya



Series: A Soft Place to Land [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: College Student Peter Parker, FebuWhump2021, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Insomnia, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Semi-therapeutic drug use, Sleep Deprivation, The Stark Lake House, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, do not copy to another site
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 20:34:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29231622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/pseuds/sahiya
Summary: Peter keeps showing up at the lake house in the middle of night. But everything is fine. Definitely fine. Totally fine.
Relationships: Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Series: A Soft Place to Land [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1567666
Comments: 23
Kudos: 273
Collections: febuwhump 2021





	When You Have to Go There

**Author's Note:**

> Unbeta'd because I'm impatient. For "insomnia," which I realize is technically tomorrow, but, again, impatient, and I'm also posting for "poisoning" on Sunday.

Mornings were Tony’s favorite time of day as a stay-at-home dad. He’d been such a night owl in his younger days, even after he mostly stopped drinking, that he rarely saw daylight before noon. 

But now, mornings meant good things. They meant breakfast with Pepper and Morgan before seeing them off to work and school; they meant puttering in the garden while drinking an extra cup of coffee; they meant a sense of possibility about the day. 

For the last two years, mornings had also been his chance for one-on-one time with Peter. Since Peter had moved out in late August, Tony’s mornings were still pleasant, but a little lonelier. He knew this was how things were supposed to go, and it wasn’t like Peter didn’t come home regularly. He just missed those morning hours.

So he was very surprised, but pleasantly so, when he got out of the shower one random Tuesday in late September just in time to hear Morgan exclaim, “Peter!” 

Tony pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt in a hurry, leaving his hair wet and his feet bare as he jogged down the stairs. “Peter?”

“Hi Tony,” Peter said, looking a little sheepish. He was wearing pajama pants and a sweatshirt, and his hair was sticking up on one side. He was standing at the stove, flipping blueberry pancakes on the griddle. 

“When did you get here?” Tony asked, baffled. He’d gone to sleep around 12:30, and Peter hadn’t been here then. 

Peter shrugged. “A few hours ago. I couldn’t sleep, so I thought I’d drive down and have breakfast with everyone. My first class isn’t until two.”

“Oh.” Tony frowned, a little concerned. 

But before he could say anything, Peter asked, “Who wants pancakes?”

“I do, I do!” Morgan yelled, jumping up and down.

“Count me in, too,” Tony said. 

“And me,” Pepper said, emerging from her office where she’d been taking an early morning call with Asia. “Good morning, Peter, what a lovely surprise.” She kissed him on the cheek, then turned to raise an eyebrow at Tony. He raised an eyebrow back, to indicate that he didn’t know anything more than she did. 

Morgan and Pepper needed to get out the door by 7:30, and until they did Tony was mostly consumed with that –– getting Pepper her coffee in a travel much, insisting that Morgan wash her face and hands after eating pancakes with syrup, making sure that Morgan remembered her lunch and her rock collection for Show-and-Tell, finding the contracts he’d signed for Pepper the night before when she realized they weren’t in her briefcase. But even with all of the usual mayhem, they were out the door by 7:34, leaving Tony and Peter alone in a quiet house. 

“Whew,” Tony said, as he came back into the kitchen. Peter was washing dishes. “Did you forget what this house is like in the morning or did you just want a dose of chaos?”

Peter smiled. “I like chaos.”

“I know you do. What did MJ used to call you?”

“A chaos Muppet,” Peter said with a laugh. 

“Yes, that.” Tony picked up one of the dishes and started drying them. “Everything okay at the apartment?”

“Yeah, everything’s fine.”

“Because as far as I can tell, you drove here in the middle of the night. You know how I feel about you being out on those roads in the dark. Or if you’re sleepy.”

“It wasn’t raining or icy,” Peter said. “And not being sleepy was kind of the original problem.”

He said it lightly, like it was nothing to worry about. He didn’t seem worried about it, nor did he seem more tired than was typical for Peter. Tony decided to let it go. “Do you have stuff to do, or do you have time for a walk by the lake?” 

“I have a bit of reading I need to finish for my history class,” Peter said, “but I could do a walk later.” 

“Okay,” Tony said. “I have some stuff to do outside. Come find me when you’re ready.”

Tony left him settling onto the sofa with his history book. It was a beautiful fall morning –– crisp but not cold, with clear skies. The lake was utterly still. Tony fed Gerald and mucked out his stall, then grabbed his gardening tools from the shed and went around to the vegetable patch at the back of the house. 

The summer veggies were over, of course, but they had some squashes growing, including a pumpkin vine that had shown up out of nowhere and clearly had designs on overtaking the entire garden. Morgan was very excited about the pumpkins and had already figured out which of her friends she was going to give them to later this month. Tony made sure that they weren’t being gnawed on by squirrels and sprinkled them with some cayenne pepper so they’d stay unspoiled. 

By then it was 10:30. Tony wiped his brow on the back of his hand and stripped off his gloves. Peter had mentioned a two o’clock class, which meant he needed to leave no later than 12:45. If they wanted to squeeze in a walk before lunch, they needed to do it soon. 

He went in the backdoor, which had a mudroom, and took off his work boots and hung up his gardening jacket. “Hey, Pete?” he called. No answer. He went down the hall. “Pete?” 

Peter was asleep, slumped in the corner of the sofa, history book open on his chest. Tony smiled to himself, despite a sliver of worry. He carefully draped a throw from the back of the sofa over Peter. They could take a walk by the lake another time. 

He let Peter sleep for an hour, but at 11:30, he had to wake him. “What?” Peter asked, startled and confused, when Tony shook his shoulder. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, kid,” Tony said. “Just wanted to make sure you had time to shower and eat before class.”

“Oh.” Peter rubbed a hand over his face. “Wait. We were gonna take a walk.”

“Another time. Go hop in the shower, I’ll make sandwiches.”

Peter still looked confused, even as he got up. “You should’ve woken me sooner.”

“You obviously needed the rest. Now go!” Tony made a shooing motion. “Get clean!”

Peter grumbled but headed off down the hall toward his bathroom. Tony went into the kitchen and started pulling things out of the fridge: turkey, cheese, tomatoes, lettuce, and a loaf of bread from the bakery in town. He started putting a nice big sandwich together for Peter, along with some cut up apples and oranges and celery sticks. 

“Did you forget I’m not five?” Peter asked when he returned to find the food spread out across the table. 

It was possible that Tony had momentarily forgotten that he wasn’t making lunch for Morgan, but he wasn’t about to admit it. “Shut up and eat your celery sticks.”

Peter laughed, but he did grab a celery stick and crunch into it. “Thanks, anyway. This is a lot better than microwaved Bagel Bites –– I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” he added, when Tony glared at him balefully. “I eat real food, Tony, I promise.”

“Hmm. Name the last vegetable you had.”

“Spinach and mushrooms in the omelette I made last night.”

“Okay.” Tony sat down with his own sandwich and grabbed a handful of apple slices. Peter dug into his own food with satisfying alacrity –– or maybe just the enthusiasm of a twenty-year-old superhero who was still growing and adding muscle mass. “So, I have to ask.”

“Do you, though?” Peter sighed. 

“Yep. Are you _sure_ everything is okay at the apartment?”

“Everything is fine at the apartment,” Peter said, looking him right in the eye. “Sandi and Trevor are great roommates. I like it there. I just... I couldn’t sleep and I wanted my own bed.”

“Is there something wrong with your mattress? Because we could ––”

“There’s nothing wrong with the mattress. Please don’t buy me a new one. It’s just... it’s new,” Peter said with a shrug. “I’m adjusting. Everything’s fine, Tony, I swear.”

Tony eyed him warily. “Okay,” he finally said. 

“Okay?”

“Okay. I believe you.”

“Great,” Peter said, looking relieved. “Thanks.”

After lunch, Tony walked Peter out to his car. “Text me when you get there,” he said, knowing there was a good chance Peter wouldn’t remember. 

“I will. I’ll see you this weekend, I think. Maybe Saturday?”

“Sounds good.” Tony squeezed Peter’s shoulder, then retreated to the bottom of the steps. He watched until Peter’s car disappeared around the bend in the driveway. 

***

A couple weeks later, Tony was up at two in the morning because the prosthesis site — also known as his shoulder — hurt like a son of a bitch in a way that Advil and THC gummies and heat pads and cold packs couldn’t touch. 

Bad days and worse nights had been commonplace at the beginning of his recovery. They were happening less and less often, but this was one of them. After failing to get comfortable enough to even pretend to sleep, Tony had given up and come downstairs. He’d settled himself in his recliner, found a David Attenborough documentary to zone out to, and taken a second gummy. If he wasn’t going to sleep, he could at least get stoned enough to not care that he wasn’t sleeping. 

He had nearly managed to doze off when he heard the crunch of gravel in the driveway. He sat up, rubbing his eyes and wondering if he was stoned enough to be hearing things or whether he should be trying to get to the gauntlet he still kept in the house. But then there was a telltale thump and Peter swearing as he tripped on the uneven porch steps. 

Tony got up and shuffled over to the front door. He opened it. “Peter?”

“Oh God, did I wake you?” Peter asked. He had his backpack slung over his shoulder and was wearing flannel pajama bottoms and a Cornell sweatshirt. 

“No, I was up.” Tony frowned. “Why are you here?”

“Why were you up?” Peter replied, sliding past him and into the house. 

“Shoulder,” Tony said shortly. 

“Oh,” Peter said. 

Tony stared at him. 

Peter frowned in confusion, then suddenly smiled. “You’re stoned, aren’t you? How many gummies did you take?”

“Two. You want one?”

“Yeah,” Peter said, letting his backpack fall to the ground. “Sure.”

Tony blinked in surprise. “Really? You never say yes.”

“I usually have shit to do,” Peter said with a shrug. “But I’m tired and I couldn’t sleep, so sure, I’ll have a gummy. Maybe it’ll help.”

“It might.” Tony handed him the little tin from the side table. Peter opened it up and ate one. “Is that why you’re here in the middle of the night again?” he asked, as he lowered himself back into his recliner. “Can’t sleep?”

Peter nodded. “Didn’t think anyone would be up. I was just gonna sneak in and hopefully catch a few hours here.”

“Hmm.” Tony thought he should probably question this further, but he was tired and in pain and also _really, really_ stoned. He couldn’t seem to quite connect the dots about what was wrong with it. “Okay.”

“Okay?” Peter repeated, eyebrows raised. 

“Yeah. Want to watch some _Blue Planet_?”

“Sure,” Peter said, smiling at him fondly. He stretched out on the couch under a fleecy throw, while Tony pulled his own blanket all the way up to his chin. He smiled, content despite the nagging pain in his shoulder. 

“What are you smiling about?” Peter asked. . 

“You being here,” Tony said honestly. “I like having both my kids under one roof.”

Peter huffed a laugh. “God, you’re so high.”

“Yep,” Tony agreed. “But it’s still true.”

Peter shook his head. Tony told FRIDAY to turn the lights out and start the documentary. 

Maybe the pain had finally started to subside, or maybe it was the comfort of knowing both his kids were safe at home, but Tony didn’t last even half of the episode before dozing off in the recliner. He woke once, briefly, to see that the TV was off –– probably thanks to FRIDAY –– and Peter was still on the sofa, snoring softly. Tony closed his eyes and went back to sleep. 

The next thing he knew, morning light was streaming in through the windows, and the smell of cooking bacon was in the air. 

“Peter!” Morgan yelled, followed by a giant thud that meant she’d leapt down the last three stairs, just as Tony and Pepper had repeatedly told her not to do. 

“Shh, Mo, your dad’s still asleep. He had a short night. His arm was hurting him.”

“Sorry,” Morgan said in a stage whisper. “What are you doing here?” 

“I wanted to come see you. I missed you.”

“I missed you, too. Can we have pancakes again?”

“How about waffles instead?”

“Ooh, yeah, _waffles_.”

“Okay. Can you help me make the batter?”

“Yes!”

Tony sat up slowly. His body ached a little from his night in the chair, but his shoulder felt better. His head was also much clearer, which meant that Peter’s presence in the house –– as welcome as it was –– set off a whole bunch of alarm bells it hadn’t the night before. 

“Hi Daddy!” Morgan said when he came into the kitchen. She was standing on her stool at the counter, moving batter around in a mixing bowl. 

“Good morning, mongoose,” Tony said, dropping a kiss on top of her head. “Good morning, spider baby,” he added, and kissed the top of Peter’s head, too. Morgan giggled. Peter rolled his eyes.

“Would you mind taking over the waffle iron while I grab a shower?” Peter asked him. “I have a nine o’clock class, so I need to get out of here when Mo and Pepper do.”

“Sure.” Tony moved in, flipping one waffle out of the iron and ladeling the batter for the next. Morgan watched avidly, ready to tell him the moment the light turned off that it was ready. 

It was a very hurried family breakfast in the end, with three out of the four of them rushing to get out the door. Tony saw Pepper and Morgan off, then came back inside to find Peter in his hands and knees, fishing a sneaker out from beneath the coffee table. 

“So...” Tony said slowly, regarding him. 

“No time to chat, I’m gonna be late,” Peter replied, putting his shoes on. 

“Pete—“

Peter jumped up and grabbed his backpack. “Sorry. I’ll call you later, okay?”

Tony sighed, resigned. “Text me when you get to campus?”

“Will do!” Peter said, and ran out the door. Tony followed him onto the porch and, once again, watched until Peter’s car rounded the bend in the driveway and he disappeared from view. 

“Hmm,” Tony said aloud. 

“Boss?” FRIDAY inquired via Tony’s watch. 

“Nothing. How about some workshop time this morning, FRI?”

“I’ll start booting things up.”

“Thanks.” He was going to need another cup of coffee, he decided, heading inside. And maybe while his brain was working on other things, the back half would figure out the problem of Peter. 

***

“HOLY FORKING SHIRTBALLS I’M SO LATE!”

Tony jerked upright in shock at the kitchen table, where he’d been dealing with a pile of unanswered Stark Industries emails. Peter came barreling down the hall, still in his pajamas, backpack in one hand and shoes in the other. 

“Peter?” Tony said in disbelief. “What the hell are you —“

“No time, I have a fucking midterm in sixty-five minutes. God _damm_ it.”

“Peter,” Tony said firmly, going to stand in front of him. “Take a deep breath. You can’t drive like this.”

“I don’t have time to —”

“Yes, you do. Get dressed, I’ll make you some coffee for the road.”

Peter huffed in impatience, but he dropped his shoes and took his backpack into the half bath off the living room. Tony poured coffee with cream and an obscene amount of sugar into a travel mug and dug a couple of granola bars out of the cupboard. 

It was 9:30. Pepper and Morgan had been gone for two hours. Tony hadn’t even known Peter was here. He must have slept straight through the morning chaos.

Peter emerged from the bathroom about two minutes later. His hair was still a mess but he was wearing jeans instead of pajamas, and he looked like he had splashed some water on his face. 

“Thanks,” he said, accepting the coffee and the granola bars. He drew a deep breath. “Tony...”

“It’s okay, Pete,” Tony said. “Go. Drive safe.” 

Peter nodded. He shouldered his backpack and left. 

Tony didn’t follow him out this time, but he stood staring at the door, lost in thought, until long after Peter had driven away.

***

_Hey Pete, how did the midterm go?_

**Ok I think. I was only a couple minutes late.**

_Good. Look, I don’t want to put any pressure on you, but I’m worried. Let me know if you want to talk._

**I will, but things are fine, I promise.**

_Ok. Love you, kid._

***

Tony’s phone was ringing. 

He groaned, still more than half asleep, even as he snaked an arm out from under the covers to grab it. 

“What’s going on?” Pepper asked groggily. 

“Dunno.” Tony squinted at the screen. “Pete?”

“Shit, you were asleep,” Peter said. “I thought you might be up. I’m so sorry, this is so stupid and it’s totally my fault, I shouldn’t —”

Tony frowned in alarm, sitting up in bed. “Hey, kid, stop, what’s wrong?”

“I ran out of gas,” Peter said, sounding almost in tears. “I was driving to the house and I ran out of gas, it’s so dumb and preventable, I just wasn’t thinking. I called AAA, but it’s snowing and they said no one could get to me for two hours, and I’m kind of — I’m really cold.”

“Okay,” Tony said, throwing the covers back. “I’m on my way. Where are you?”

“I’ll drop a pin. I’m only about twenty minutes out.”

“Okay. I’m coming. Hang in there. Don’t turn into a spider-cicle.” Tony disconnected. 

Pepper turned on her bedside lamp and propped herself up on one elbow, watching him. “What’s wrong?”

“He ran out of gas on his way here,” Tony said as he shoved his feet into his shoes. “AAA was going to take forever and he’s freezing. I’m gonna go get him.”

“Are you going to talk to him?” Pepper asked. “Because something is clearly going on.”

“I’ve been trying to respect his independence like you and May are always telling me I should, but yeah, this is getting ridiculous.” Not to mention dangerous. 

“Be careful,” Pepper said, even as she rolled over to turn the lamp off and go back to sleep. “The roads might be icy.”

“I’ll be careful.” He grabbed his keys off the dresser and slipped out of the room. 

It was the first real snow fall they’d had so far this winter — the first that had stuck, anyway. The back country roads were coated with a fine layer of powder. Tony drove cautiously despite his impatience, aware that it wouldn’t help Peter for him to get into a car accident. Peter didn’t thermoregulate as well as baseline humans did, and Tony hated the idea of him sitting in his car with no heat for any longer than was strictly necessary. 

The car was parked on the side of the road. It had its lights on, thank God, or Tony might’ve driven past it. He pulled off the road behind it and got out, keys in hand, and traipsed through the snow-dusted shrubbery to knock on the passenger side window. 

Peter looked like he might’ve been sleeping, and for a second, Tony was _really_ concerned. But he startled, looking up. He immediately turned off the car’s lights and climbed out, grabbing his backpack from the backseat. 

“You okay?” Tony asked him.

“Yeah,” Peter said. His teeth were chattering. “Just cold.”

“Get in the front seat, I’ll get you the emergency blanket from the trunk.” 

He grabbed the blanket, along with a couple of hand warmers he found in the emergency kit. He climbed in on the driver’s side and passed them to Peter. 

“Thanks,” Peter muttered, spreading the blanket out over himself and cracking the hand warmers. He was shivering pretty violently, but that was a lot better than not shivering at all. Still, Tony wanted to get him home as soon as possible. He pulled a totally illegal U-turn on the empty state highway and gave the car as much gas as he safely could.

For the first mile and a half or so, neither of them said a word. Finally Peter cleared his throat. “So, uh, you know how we were in Malibu for most of August?”

“Yeah,” Tony said, confused. That wasn’t at all what he’d expected Peter to say. 

“Well, by the time I got back to Ithaca, Trevor and Sandi had already moved into our apartment. They grabbed the bedrooms at the back, and left me the one at the front. And it’s a nice room and everything. It gets really good light, and it’s got the fire escape on the side. It’s just sort of... noisy.”

“Noisy?” Tony repeated. “Pete, you grew up in Queens!”

“I know, but I haven’t lived there in almost three years! I was at the compound for a while, and then I was at the lake house. Both of them are dead silent at night.” Peter gave an aggrieved sigh. “I got soft, I guess, because between the bar across the street, the bus stop right below my window, and the couple in the apartment next to ours that likes to argue at three in the morning, I haven’t slept a whole night through since I moved in.”

“Damn,” Tony said. “So you’ve been driving to our place —”

“When I just can’t take it anymore, yeah.” Peter shook his head. “I kept thinking I’d adjust, but it’s been three months and I just can’t. And now every time I lie down to sleep there, I get so anxious, even on quieter nights I have trouble.”

“I know how that goes,” Tony said. Sleep anxiety had been a friend of his since long before Afghanistan. “But look, this is a solvable problem. For one thing, you could ask Sandi or Trevor to swap rooms with you.”

“I don’t want to put them out,” Peter replied. “It’s my problem, not theirs.”

Having met Peter’s roommates, Tony thought they’d probably disagree, but he let it go. “Okay, so that’s plan B. Plan A is we make you a set of anti-hearing aids comfortable enough for you to sleep in. Stay through the weekend and we can have them ready for you to take back with you on Sunday night.”

“Oh.” Peter sounded surprised. Tony tried not to take it personally. “Um, yeah. That’d be great. Thanks.”

“It’s no problem, Pete. I just wish you’d told me sooner.”

“I just... I wasn’t thinking all that clearly about it maybe,” Peter admitted. “But it felt, like, I dunno. Giving up, maybe? Like I couldn’t... hack it, I guess, away from home. Like what happened when I was living at the compound.”

Tony glanced sideways at Peter. “That was totally different, Pete.”

“I know. I know! But it felt the same. And I love you guys, and I loved living at the house for two years, but I can’t live there forever. I have to grow up.”

There was a harsh edge to Peter’s voice that Tony didn’t like. It was probably just frustration combined with exhaustion, but he sounded angry at himself. “So, first of all,” Tony told him, “growing up shouldn’t only be measured by things like where you live. For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve been mature for your age, whatever age that was. Second, part of growing up is asking for help when you need it. You know that.”

“I do. I just...” Peter went quiet, and when he spoke again, his voice was unexpectedly plaintive. “I thought it’d get better.”

“Hey, don’t beat yourself up over this.” Tony took one hand off the wheel and reached over to put his hand on the back of Peter’s neck. “You’ll get a good night’s sleep, and in the morning we’ll come back to get the car. Then we can start working on the anti-hearing aids. Maybe we’ll even invent something marketable. Baby’s first patent –– well, aside from the web fluid.”

Peter smiled. “Who else is going to want anti-hearing aids?”

Tony shrugged. “Other enhanced people? I bet Steve and Barnes would love them. We could even build in some white noise options or bluetooth capability so it could connect to a phone. There’s a whole market of desperate people whose partners snore, and believe or not, no one’s solved that problem.” 

“Huh,” Peter said. “I guess you’re right. Thanks, Tony. And, uh. Sorry for dragging you out of bed.” 

Tony snorted. “Pete, someday you’ll realize that being a parent means getting dragged out of bed for all kinds of things. You’re always allowed to call me for help, no matter the time of night. Always.”

Peter smiled at him. “I do know that.”

“Good.” Tony slowed the car and took the turn off the road and onto their driveway. “And you’re always allowed to come home, too. No matter what.”

“Yeah,” Peter said. Tony glanced at him and saw him smile softly as the house came into view. “I know that, too.”

_Fin._

**Author's Note:**

> Next up: Poisoning!


End file.
